The next morning, Sissy woke up to a white ceiling and an empty house. She didn’t move at first. She hadn’t struggled to fall asleep the night before, but now she was slightly apprehensive at the idea of checking the date on her phone. She had never fallen asleep naturally before, and all of this was a bit new. This whole room felt rather new, despite it not having changed in years according to the worm’s info. The furniture was second hand from Peter’s parents; the curtains were Anne’s idea. Nothing in this room had been Sissy’s preference - it was highlighted in the worm’s memory. Why ? She didn’t know. There was still so many things about her situation that she failed to grasp accurately. It was hard to move, hard to think, hard to settle in this skin. She half believed it would get easier; half doubted it. Nonetheless she had no choice but to move forward.

She finally reached for her phone after a while, then stared at the screen until it turned black. It was really “tomorrow”. Not ten days or five years later, in another body, in another place. Nothing had changed in her sleep. She closed her eyes and buried her head into the pillow. Relief made her sleepy again, now she didn’t want to get up.

A bit later, her phone rang. The screen displayed a single word: “Grandma”. Sissy took the call after a slight pause.

“Hello, honey. How are you doing ?”

“I’m fine.”

“Did you just wake up ?”

“Hm.”

“Oh well, I won’t bother you for too long… Your father just told me that you two had a fight yesterday and I wanted you to know that our door is always open if you want to talk.”

A fight ? Is that what you’d call it ?

“He didn’t want to wake you up but he feels really sorry about what happened. You know, he doesn’t mean it… He’s just worried about you, we all are. After Anne left -”

Sissy hang up.

That was fucking creepy.

Her heart was beating too quickly, she started salivating excessively. Ah, she wanted to throw up. She laid there, as still as possible as she tried to breathe through it. Her grandmother calling to mediate her relationship with Peter was an occasional occurrence for the worm, but she had never experienced it. Moreover, “Grandma” had no name. At the other end of the phonecall, that was nothing more than a puppet here to make this world appear less empty - the kind she had met on the streets yesterday, a face like a million of others and eyes like empty holes. There had to be a reason you couldn’t look those beings in the eye; because there was nothing here. Didn’t they say that eyes were portals to the soul ? But what if there was no soul ?

A shiver went down her spine.

She was feeling claustrophobic, stuck between soulless shells and named pricks. Or maybe it was this room that made her feel this way. This room that had her name on the door, but held nothing of hers. All of this was just a loan - even her life. Would she go back to servitude if she found “the dirty thing” ? What did that even mean ? Somehow she wished she had been born from a blank slate, pure and untainted as freshly fallen snow. The world would have looked like a place to conquer instead of a deadly trap. She would have worn her hope on her sleeve instead of having red eyes.

She cried, but it didn’t relieve her of the sense of unease that had crept up under her skin.

After a while, she got up. Peter had left for work, her brother had left to do whatever he did in his free time. Nobody was there to comment on her appearance when she finally left her bed and sluggishly headed to the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, she was outside again, phone and keys tucked into her shorts pocket, wearing the same flip flops than yesterday.

She remembered the devil’s instructions.

“You should look around these days. See if you see anything unusual.”

She thought it reasonable to walk around until something caught her eye, and so that was her plan. With that idea in mind, she started her morning stroll, something that had been in her habits long before the devil woke her up.

**

Usually Sissy walked in circles.

Circle.

Circle.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Circle.

Like that, until her legs hurt or someone called. But this time, for the sake of experiment, she chose to follow a straight line. She left her house by 10 a.m. By 1 p.m., she had reached the end of the world.

Sissy stared at the white infinite space in front of her.

The road stopped neat at her feet, behind her were the last houses of the street. Beyond that point, there was nothing, just a white void expanding in all directions. Sissy felt something stir inside her guts. She instinctively raised her head, her heartbeat chaotic.

The sky was cut in half - like a half done mural on someone’s ceiling.

Her voice died in her throat before she could cry out. What was this ? The buzzing in her ears came back. Again, she was looking at something she wasn’t supposed to be. But it was too late already to look away, and too late to swallow back the words about to fall from her lips.

“So lazy.”

That devil bitch was so fucking lazy. What was the point of creating this whole world and trap them inside if he was going to half-arse it ? Was this a fucking school project ? Did he miss a deadline ? Oh no, it was coming again. She started feeling hot under her yellow t-shirt, bones and knuckles cracking under the weight of this absurdity. She could taste iron; she spat on the ground at her feet. She truly wondered: was life supposed to be this bizarre ? Her mood kept changing with each piece of info she learned, truth kept morphing into shapes she hadn’t learned about - colors she hadn’t seen before. The bigger the spectrum, the less she wanted to hold on. All those shades of bullshit, gray mud sticking to her brand new skin when she had never learned how to swim. They told her to call an adult if she was feeling bad.

Well, she was feeling like shit.

But every number in her phone lead to an headache. She hugged herself but that wasn’t for comfort. She felt like she was going to jump out of her own skin - a pointless escape. She could see her arteries exploding when her blood would get tired of keeping alive a body that served no purpose. She should have be born and died the same day; she would have died ignorant but hopeful there was something more, something to bite into. There wasn’t. The only dirty thing stuck in this realm was its very architect.

And she had no mission.

No, maybe she did, at the very beginning. After all, they never left the museum. The devil had just took everything inside and repurposed it - but to what end ? That was the only thing she had no answer for, or maybe the only answer worth knowing. Nothing else mattered really. And now, she was like the devil’s retainers before they drowned on the fatidic day the portal opened - like Peter.

Praying for a meaningful heaven.

One that would reunite them with their loved ones, that could give them back their youth. A paradise pure enough to justify death and the loneliness of their agony.

Sissy stared at the cut in the sky for a long time.

How strange to pray when god was one call away, she finally thought.

She fished the phone out of her pocket and dialed Nate’s number. The devil picked up after the third ring. Sissy cut to the chase as soon as she heard his voice.

“Hey.”

“So what’s the point ?”

“Hm ?”

“Tell me there’s a point.”

The devil was a bit confused.

“To what ?”

“To this, to all of this.”

It sounded like she was begging; it sounded like someone else's voice.

“Why did you open the portal ?”

“Why not ?”

Sissy’s expression fell.

“So just because you could ?”

“Sissy, do you daydream before falling asleep ?”

“What ?”

Sissy thought she had misheard him for a second.

“What ?”, she repeated.

“I do. I like it.”

There was a strange softness in the devil’s voice. Sissy was slightly frowning.

“I don’t get it.”

“I’ll go to sleep soon.”

Sissy blinked.

“I’m just having fun before it happens.”

Sissy blinked again, because there was something in her eyes. It took her a while to find her voice again.

“That’s it ?”

“Yeah. Did you eat ? I’m on my way home, I can grab you something.”

Silence fell. The thought crossed her mind: it had been less than 24 hours, and she wanted to die again. That’s not what she said though.

“No thanks,” she heard herself mutter.

Shortly after, the devil hang up and she stayed there, on the edge of the world, wondering if the void would take her if she offered herself to it. Somehow she wished she had born from this white space; from a blank page, untouched yet - like freshly fallen snow. She would have found a way to twist this life into a great challenge, she would have built hope from broken fragments. But she was dirty already, because she had lived once, or twice, and death leaves an imprint. After that, you remember absolutes. Like there was absolutely no way this world held anything but false promises seeing the way it was shaped.

There was no space for ambition in this fish bowl.

And now she wasn’t special anymore; she was just another sad cunt stuck in a reality she had no control over and, if given the opportunity, she was pretty sure her own blood would leave her for better prospects. She could cut her finger and bleed to death. She could stay here and wait for her father to treat her like a runaway. He’d probably call the police on her, and everyone would get mad at her instead of being upset at the cut in the sky. She could do that.

But instead she turned heels.

As she walked away, she wondered what could be dirtier than the devil’s habits.